ill operated
bravely west of this line, the whole of Mississippi and a large part of
Alabama were beyond aid from Richmond. But the average man did not
grasp the situation. When a region is dominated by mobile armies the
appearance of things to the civilian is deceptive. Because the powerful
Federal armies of the Southwest, at the opening of 1864, were massed at
strategic points from Tennessee to the Gulf, and were not extended along
an obvious trench line, every brave civilian would still keep up his
hope and would still insist that the middle Gulf country was far
from subjugation, that its defense against the invader had not become
hopeless.

Under such conditions, when the Government at Richmond called upon the
men of the Southwest to regard themselves as mere sources of supply,
human and otherwise, mere feeders to a theater of war that did not
include their homes, it was altogether natural that they should resent
the demand. All the tragic confusion that was destined in the course of
the fateful year 1864 to paralyze the Government at Richmond was already
apparent in the middle Gulf country when the year began. Chief among
these was the inability of the State and Confederate Governments to
cooperate adequately in the business of conscription. The two powers
were determined rivals struggling each to seize the major part of the
manhood of the community. While Richmond, looking on the situation with
the eye of pure strategy, wished to draw together the full man-power
of the South in one great unit, the local authorities were bent on
retaining a large part of it for home defense.

In the Alabama newspapers of the latter half of 1863 strange incidents
are to be found throwing light on the administrative duel. The writ of
habeas corpus, as was so often the case in Confederate history, was the
bone of contention. We have seen that the second statute empowering the
President to proclaim martial law and to suspend the operation of the
writ had expired by limitation in February, 1863. The Alabama courts
were theoretically in full operation, but while the law was in force the
military authorities had acquired a habit of arbitrary control. Though
warned from Richmond in general orders that they must not take unto
themselves a power vested in the President alone, they continued their
previous course of action. It thereupon became necessary to issue
further general orders annulling "all proclamations of martial law
by general o